KANKI!

Kyle and I had been CRAVING Kanki (the best Japanese restaurant there is.. but it's only in Raleigh) and we were able to talk everyone into going with us! My entire family went plus Kyle's parents, so it was wonderful getting both families together to eat some good food!

And here is the whole clan (minus Mrs. G as she was taking the picture):Thank you everyone for going here! Kyle and I also ate Goodberry's while we were home (the best icecream place on the planet!) Wish we could open up some of these restaurants in Atlanta!!

Christmas with Leah's family!

On Christmas Eve morning, Kyle and I woke up early and started the trek to Raleigh. We spent the entire day with family then headed to the Christmas Eve service at Stony Hill.
Christmas morning we had a wonderful time watching the kids enjoy all their presents and seeing everyones reactions to their gifts. We had drawn names this year, so Kyle had my dad and I had Nick. Nick actually had Kyle and definitely won the award for most creative!! It was a tissue box filled with one dollar bills and on each bill was a sticky note with a word on it from Nick. It said stuff like "dear... kyle... you... are... the... best... brother... (y'all get the point and of course it was hilarious). At the end Kyle had pulled out $60, for a Christmas present and his birthday present from Nick. It was so funny.

Kyle and I gave Grandma a photo album filled with all the pictures from Grandpa's slide show, his wake and funeral. Also I made an envelope and glued it in the back of one of the albums to hold the dvd that I burned of everything. She loved it-- we sure all missed having Grandpa around on Christmas.

Of course while we were opening presents we had to have MONKEY BREAD!!
Tara had drawn my name and she worked with dad for my present! He had actually bought it for me off of Ebay in May of 2008 and then forgot about it! WELL he found it a couple weeks ago and Tara knew it was so perfect for me she bought it from dad. I couldn't love it anymore. Can you figure out what it is??

Stumped yet? It's actually a wooden G used in letterpress printing. It's black from being saturated in ink for so long and we think because of it's size that it was used for banners. It just couldn't be any more "ME" and I absolutely love it! I think I've finally found what I'm going to start collecting!

We had a wonderful Christmas and hope you did too!

Christmas in ATL

This year we decided to spend the Wednesday before Christmas Eve in Atlanta and celebrate our Christmas together then. It was awesome not having to travel right after work and instead come home, bake some cookies and exchange gifts.
Kyle and I had not gotten each others stockings items yet (we both procrastinated) so we ended up going to Walmart TOGETHER, then splitting up to get little items for the stockings. It was hilarious trying to not see the other person and what they were getting.

So anyways, we started off our night by giving the cats their stockings. Walmart had these amazing deals of animal stockings for $5 that had so many more toys then I could ever get for that much. The cats LOVED them, especially the ones with catnip in them. I just love how Puck curls things in his paws like this:
And I can't leave out Elle:
Next Kyle and I ate our "dinner" of chips & queso while Tyson opened his stocking. I do have to say Tyson LOVES opening gifts and he's really good at it!

And next were our stockings! They were filled with candy, practical things, toys and lots more.
I then had Kyle open up my gifts to him! He already knew about 3 of them (a Dremel, the Dremel accessories, and a creeper to help him work underneath Levi) but I did manage to surprise him on pictures I printed out and framed for his office! I chose Tyson, a picture I took in Boone and a pic I took in Wyoming on Jackson Lake. He loved them!

Since Kyle bought me those earrings and printer I had already told him he wasn't allowed to buy me anything else. Well of course he broke the rules and bought me GUITAR LESSONS!! This may come as a shock to most of you but like Kyle knows I've wanted to learn for forever and am just so excited about this gift. Yes I did start crying.
He then handed me this:

That's right PHOTOGRAPHY CLASSES TOO!!! He had printed out a couple different options of places that I'll have to choose from as well as this {beautiful} gift certificate made from Powerpoint. If you'll read the fine print at the bottom: "If these lessons are not redeemed by April 1st, 2010 all knee pit access for Leah's toes will be revoked for one year". (does anyone else LOVE putting their toes in their hubby's knee pits to keep warm when you are going to bed?) I certainly don't want to lose that privilege and will gladly choose photography classes before then! I am just SO excited! Thank you "SANTA" I am so excited to learn new things in 2010!

Baking for Christmas gifts!

For the past 3 years I've been enjoying making little gifts for our friends with different recipes and packaging (you can see them all here). This year I went the easiest route and did Peppermint Bark. I've heard of this recipe from so many people but had never tried it myself! It was very very easy!

So first Kyle crushed up the candy canes with a hammer:
While I melted the white chocolate:
Mix it together and put in a pan! (Oh and you can put peppermint extract in the melted chocolate as well) Then sprinkle some extras on top:
I used some cute velvet bags that I had gotten for free from my company, made little tags for them, and stuck in a candy cane! (I put the peppermint bark in little resealable plastic bags inside the velvet ones)
SUPER EASY this year!

Card Swap!

This year I participated in a card swap with 5 other ladies from around the globe! I actually signed up for it off of a blog that I follow and I guess they divided everyone up into little groups so we wouldn't have to make that many. It was neat making cards out of scraps that I had laying around. No printer or computer designing at all... kind of nice :)

So the rules were just do send anything creative, and you could attach a recipe if you would like. As long as you send it out by Dec 15th at the latest. WELL I ended up sending mine out Dec 23rd so I made it "Happy New Years" cards instead of Christmas ones. I guess better late than never right?! haha

So here are the cards I got in the mail:




And here was mine that I sent out! I just cut some scrapbooking paper up, punched some holes, tied some ribbon, and used spray adhesive to put in some white paper for my note on the inside Very easy!

The inside where I wrote my notes:
The backs:

Very fun-- I'm glad I did it!

Merry Christmas!!

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
-- Isaiah 9:6 --

Frame the Date!

I came home the other day to a package on our front porch addressed to me! I had heard about Frame the Dates, but never had one of my own!!

What a wonderful gift for Kyle's and my anniversary. All the numbers that Molly picked out are just perfect! You did NOT need to send me this, but I couldn't love it anymore! Thank you so much Molly, what a sweet sweet friend you are!

Only when Kyle's out of town...

- Do we get ants in our entire pantry. Not just on one shelf, but all of them. Not just on the outside of packaging but in every single food bag we had. EUGH!

- Does our 9 foot Christmas tree fall over. Leaving water everywhere, broken ornaments, a broken stand, and a crying wife THINKING she's strong enough to pick back up the tree but not able to b/c of the broken stand.

- Do I get locked out of the house.... even WITH my keys. Our front door handle decided to break leaving me completely locked outside at 7:30 am when it was 28 degrees outside with no phone. I had locked the back door (doesn't have an opening for a key) by the handle the night before since Kyle was out of town. Well luckily one of my neighbors was home and I was able to use their phone to call Kyle (yes it was 4:30 am California time... poor guy). He helped coach me to take one of his screwdrivers and take off the back door handle. I still can only go in and out our back door though since the front one is broken! Luckily Ky comes home today and will fix it!

What will happen next?! haha. This really makes me appreciate when Kyle is in town and what a great team we make together. It's a lot to face on your own for sure!!

Busy Busy little elves!!

YEAHHHH I've finally finished our Christmas Cards!

Would you like to see my workshop? Here is where I have my printer set up (printing off a roll rather than cut paper = cheaper). So I designed & printed the fronts, cut the fronts with my trusty exacto, designed & printed the backs, cut the backs with the exacto (wanted to print double sided but it wouldn't work on photo paper... it likes to smear), spray adhesive-d the back to the front, stuff all the envelopes, stamped all the envelopes, put our return address on all the envelopes and addressed all the envelopes. A LONG PROCESS that took me 2 days to complete.

Now I realize that I'm giving you a sneak peak of our cards so don't look too closely! haha

Also in the past couple weeks we have:
- Officially graduated from Newlyweds (completed the 2 year study) and attended the Christmas party! We are encouraged to join/form a small group with the other couples that graduated so I'll update about that when we do!

- Had our Christmas luncheon at KA with delicious food as always. Jennifer, our CEO, changed the words to the 12 days of Christmas once again this year to include a poem about our company with everyone's names in it.

Here she is reading it to us. Very cute :)

And our lovely favors on the tables:
- Went out to dinner at Ruths Chris with Kyle's boss Tim and his wife, Deidra. Since Tim and Kyle work in Atlanta and the rest of the company is in Memphis, we were able to go out for our own little Christmas party! Very nice!!

- Finished all of our Christmas present shopping and wrapped all the gifts! Don't you just love it when there are tons of presents under the tree? Especially when they are ALL FOR OTHER PEOPLE!?!